Commentary on “A History of Twentieth-Century American Academic Cartography” by Robert Mcmaster and Susanna Mcmaster Sara Irina Fabrikant
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Commentary on “A History of Twentieth-Century American Academic Cartography” by Robert McMaster and Susanna McMaster Sara Irina Fabrikant KEYWORDS: History of cartography ; thematic cartography , 20th century cartography , Germany, Austria, Switzerland n their contribution to the recent specia l issue Sara Irina Fabrikant is an Assistant Professor at the of Cartography and Geographic Information Department of Geography, University of California Santa Barbara, Science on “Exploratory Essays: History of Ellison Hall 3611, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, U.S.A. E-mail: ICartography in the Twentieth Century” (V ol. 29, <[email protected]>. No. 3, pp. 305-321), McMaster and McMaster make the claim that “a lthough the main de vel- Germany, Austria, or Switzerland in their list of opment of thematic mapping can be traced to countries with “very rich cartographic acti vity” (p. nineteenth-century Europe, it is in the twentieth- 305). By only broadly sketching the recent history century United States that thematic cartography of academic cartography in German-speaking evolved as an academic discip line” (p. 306). In this nations (i.e., Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), commentary, I will argue and pro vide evidence for one can show that the McMasters ’ statement is the idea that fundamenta l contributions to the factually wrong. Although the authors assert their development of academic thematic cartography exclusive focus on the history of academic cartog- were made in Europe, and that these de velopments raphy only in the U.S., it is informati ve to compare occurred ear lier than those imp lied by McMaster that history to the history in the German-speaking and McMaster in the U.S. In other words , I intend nations, as those nations form a homogeneous unit to show that the McMasters ’ conclusion is a serious in terms of cartographic research and teaching overstatement , possibly a blatant misstatement . activities, due to their shared language and simi lar Unfortunately this is not the first time such an academic practices . inaccurate statement has been made in a U.S. pub- Key cartographers in Germany at the turn of the lication; such statements are sometimes regrettab ly 20th century—the McMasters ’ “incipient period” recited as recei ved wisdom by others .1 Appearing (p. 306: a period dominated by few key individu- as it does in a specia l issue on the history of 20th als teaching at academic institutions )—were A. century cartography , the claim by McMaster and Hettner (Heidelberg, with cartographic pub lica- McMaster deser ves to be elaborated further and tions as ear ly as 1901 and 1910); A. Penck, R. supported by e vidence, as it is an important yet Kiepert, and W. Behrmann (Berlin); M. Eckert and doubtful assertion. F. Ratzel (Leipzig); and H. Wagner (Göttingen). The statement by the McMasters is comparati ve Max Groll received a lecturer position in cartog- in nature, but no factua l comparisons are pro vided raphy at the Berlin University in 1902. He is well to support the c laim. The authors ac knowledge known for a two- volume cartography te xtbook the existence of academic cartography outside the published in paperbac k format. This textbook, U.S. (p. 305), but they do not e laborate on that which was updated se veral times and e xtended point. Two cartographers on the ad visory board in 1970 by G. Hake, has been a standard te xt in for the specia l issue are from German-speak- academic cartography e ver since (currently in ing nations , yet the McMasters do not inc lude its 8th edition, Hake et al., 2002). In Austria, K. 1 “Academic study of map design did not emerge as a scientific discipline until after the second World War (McMaster and Thrower (1987)”, quoted from Buttenfield and Mackaness (1991, p. 429). Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2003, pp. 81-84 Peucker (educated in Berlin and Breslau) started for maps on socio-demographic and economic his academic career in cartography at the “Wiener (industrial) developments, as well as for identifying Hochschule für Welthandel” (“Vienna University locations of natura l resources, typically published for World Trade”) in 1910. Peucker wrote inf luen- in regional and nationa l atlases. These develop- tial works on theoretic (thematic) cartography and ments were not e xclusive to the German-speak- is known for his editorship on many at lases that ing countries . Important academic cartographic include thematic maps . works in this respect were the Russian at lases Despite WWI, thematic cartography de veloped (1851, 1869-1873, 1914) and the So viet atlas further at many academic institutions in the publications by Baranskij (1929-31). Baranskij German-speaking nations . The contributions of started lecturing on “economic cartography” at Max Eckert’s Kartenwissenschaft (1921/25), dis- the Geography Department of the University of cussed in Monte llo’s article in the same specia l Moscow in 1932. Arkadi Preobrazenskij’s textbook issue of CAGIS, is better known to English-speak- on “Economic Cartography ,” showcasing much of ing cartographers than the contributions of the Baranskij’s cartography princip les, appeared in scholars cited abo ve, as some of his writings ha ve Russian in 1953, and was trans lated into German been translated (e.g., Joerg 1977). In Zürich, in 1956. Preobrazenskij’s text, together with the Eduard Imhof founded in 1925 at the Swiss British cartography te xtbook by Monkhouse and Federal Institute of Techno logy (ETHZ) what was Wilkinson (1952), were the two main te xtbooks for most probab ly the world’s first academic cartog- thematic cartography instruction in the German- raphy department . Among other things , Imhof ’s speaking countries before the 1960s. Interestingly, research dea lt with developing the Swiss High Preobrazenskij traces the dasymetric mapping tech- School and Secondary Schoo l atlases, and later nique back to the Russian cartographer Semeno v- the Swiss National Atlas. As early as 1923 he was Tjan-Sanskij (1922, cited in Preobrazenskij 1956: lecturing on cartographic design , and his “the- 40). Dasymetric mapping is often fa lsely attributed matic cartography” course began in the summer of to J. K. Wright in the U.S., although Wright (1936) 1954, at the ETHZ. Imhof would later become the acknowledged its Russian roots . Another notab le first president of the Internationa l Cartographic and early European contribution to the thematic Association (1961-64). Imhof also taught inter- mapper’s toolbox is the value-by-area cartogram . national courses in cartography at the ETHZ in Hermann Haac k and H. Wiechel published a car- 1957 and 1960. He participated in the Second togram depicting e lection resu lts from the German Internationa l Cartographic Conference (Rand Reichstag in 1903 (cited in Eckert 1925). McNally Conference ) in Evanston, Illinois, in 1958, Aside from the estab lished cartography centers which the McMasters mention in their artic le. in Berlin (A. Penck, at this point joined by N. Krebs The occurrence of two wor ld wars in Europe and E. Tiessen), Vienna (E. Peucker), and Zürich during the first ha lf of the 20th century wi ll always be (E. Imhof), new cartography programs emerged a major factor to consider when ma king any historic after WWI in Frankfurt am Main (W. Behrmann), comparisons between the U.S. and European coun- Breslau (W. Geisler), Greifswald (W. Witt), Halle tries. Academic de velopments in cartography in the (O. Schülter), and Hannover (N. Creutzburg). The German-speaking countries were se verely impacted first cartographic society in Germany was founded by the two wor ld wars, especially in Germany and in 1937, with participants from academia , govern- Austria. The wars were probab ly one reason why the ment, and the map-pub lishing sector . Although sheer volume of academic acti vity (totals of institu- academic cartography in Germany and Austria tions and peop le involved) is smaller in terms of was under Nazi control during WWII (and thus absolute numbers than in the U.S. (of course, raw confined to war-re lated activities), theoretica l figures shou ld be population- or institution-weighted cartographic pub lications continued to appear for comparison ). But in spite of the wars , the qualita- in academic journals (e.g., on classification , color, tive impacts of European thematic cartography on map types) such as the Jahrbuch der Kartographie academia are considerab le in terms of research para- (“Yearbook of Cartography”) published in 1941-2. digms and particu lar research foci such as (but not After the war , academic cartography programs limited to) map design , semiology, map semantics , were first reinstated in Germany in Bonn and generalization, and map perception and cognition in Hannover (E. Meynen, K. Brüning, and W. (as shown, for example, in the Monte llo article in the Witt), and developed rapidly elsewhere after that . special issue). New cartographic societies were subse quently Until WWII, academic thematic cartography founded in Germany (1952), Austria (1961), and evolved in Europe as a resu lt of the increased need Switzerland (1969). One of the ma jor cartographic 82 Cartography and Geographic Information Science conferences in the German-speaking countries impediments to any history is the potentia l danger is the “Deutscher Kartographen Tag” (“German of linguistic fragmentation . To overcome the pit- Cartographer Day”), which has ta ken place since falls of the language barrier , it becomes crucia l to 1952. The term “thematische Karte” (“thematic access key publications in their origina l language map”) was coined by N. Creutzburg at the first and not to re ly solely on translated sources . Many “Kartographen Tag” meeting . The major journal important contributions ha ve not been trans lated for academic cartography in the German-speaking into the current dominant academic language countries is the Kartographische Nachrichten , pub- (English), but that does not mean they do not e xist.